Rollout of space shuttle Discovery was slow-going due to the onset of lightning in the area of Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

First motion of the shuttle out of the Vehicle Assembly Building was at 2:07 a.m. Aug. 4. Discovery's 13-day flight will deliver a new crew member and 33,000 pounds of equipment to the International Space Station. The equipment includes science and storage racks, a freezer to store research samples, a new sleeping compartment and the COLBERT treadmill. Launch of Discovery on its STS-128 mission is targeted for late August. Credit: Photo Courtesy of Justin Dernier/EPA.

A friend of mine who is a huge NASA, Aeronautics, and Camera buff happened to be in Florida this week on business. He was headed to watch the launch with his Canon 50D and f/2.8 300mm lens. Hopefully it launches soon as I'd hate for him to miss his opportunity to get some of his own shots of it!

A friend of mine who is a huge NASA, Aeronautics, and Camera buff happened to be in Florida this week on business. He was headed to watch the launch with his Canon 50D and f/2.8 300mm lens. Hopefully it launches soon as I'd hate for him to miss his opportunity to get some of his own shots of it!

Just hope your friend is wide awake for the launch if all goes well & if he does grab some shots, see if you can get a few to post.

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The mission to the international space station was postponed until 1:10 a.m. ET Wednesday, NASA said.

Bad weather forced mission controllers to put off a pre-dawn launch Tuesday, while a second planned launch was scrubbed after a hydrogen valve failed to show up on controllers' displays as being closed. NASA now hopes to launch the shuttle at 12:22 a.m. Friday after new tests on the valve, which controls the flow of liquid hydrogen into the shuttle's external fuel tank, launch integration manager Mike Moses told reporters Tuesday night.